Ela Minus. Photo by Alvaro Arisó
Every Friday, The FADER’s writers dive into the most exciting new projects released that week. Today, read our thoughts on Ela Minus’ DÍA, jasmine.4.t’s You Are The Morning, A.Blomqvist’s Pohjola, and more.
Ela Minus: DÍA
Recorded after spending time in her native Colombia, the Mojave Desert, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Mexico City, and London, DÍA is electronic producer Ela Minus’ second album and a notable step up from her 2020 debut, Acts of Rebellion. Where once her music explored the more withdrawn aspects of the club, sleek but muscular songs like “Combat” and “Broken” levitate with a unifying force. Minus’ quietly political writing continues to shine through, too, with “Upwards” one of many that point to resilience being the most important tool in fighting oppression, be that on a personal or systemic level. At every stage DÍA pulses with a contagious energy. Standing still is not an option. — David Renshaw
Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp
jasmine.4.t: You Are The Morning
It could be enough to tell you that jasmine.4.t’s new album was produced by all three members of boygenius, or that the Manchester singer-songwriter is the newest signee to Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory label. But that would be inadequate service to her album, a shockingly intimate document of life, death, and desire from a fierce songwriter whose songs speak for themselves. Its 13 simple and warm guitar tracks have a profound interiority that makes you want to dig deeper. “How could you want this? This corpse of a girl still face-down in another kitchen down south?” She asks on its breezy opener. The rest bounces from thoughts of suicide to profound joy in the face of unexpected love, to cherishing the acceptance of friendship. —Steffanee Wang
Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp
Blacksea Não Maya: Despertar
The final farewell from Blacksea Não Maya, a signature of the Lisbon-based experimental dance label Príncipe, sends the trio off on a high — and somewhat brooding — note. As always, the foundation is batidas, a kind of electronic music stone soup in its welcoming, communal treatment of genres. But the sound is an unmistakably dark one, announced by the (literally) industrial trip-hop of opening track “Reborda” and more subtly on “Tolobasco,” a cut of melancholy, psychedelic reggaeton. The patchwork is seamless and colorful: Clubbier moments like “Kirraxo” simmer with sinogrime’s sleek techno-hell synths, and the grungey “BALEBALE” sounds like Sonic Youth if they lived someplace sunnier. Daring and surprisingly bittersweet, Despertar is a whole world rather than a mere footnote, life bursting from every genre collision with the joy of spontaneous creation its guiding energy. — Jordan Darville
Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp
A.Blomqvist: Pohjola
There’s a subtle brilliance in the outwardly conventional stylings of Finnish pianist/composer A.Blomqvist. On his new album Pohjola, billed as a love letter to his native country, he evokes the sublime with sparse figurations. These lilting legato melodies drift through spacetime like specters, gently gnawing at something somewhere deep beneath the skin. Ghostly, too, is the longing present in every note, as if each song has found itself in a home town it doesn’t recognize, roaming streets where everyone it has ever known has disappeared. — Raphael Helfand
Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music
Other projects out today that you should listen to
chlothegod: I Feel Different Every Day
Ex-Vöid: In Love Again
lots of hands: into a pretty room
Mac Miller: Balloonerism
Prism Shores: Out From Underneath
Qrion: We Are Always Under the Same Sky
Rose Gray: Louder, Please
Skiifall: Lovers Til I’m Gone EP
smokedope2016: The Peak
some fear: some fear
Sophie Jamieson: I Still Want to Share
Son Lux: Risk Of Make Believe EP
ZORA: BELLAdonna